HOWTO: Create a tri-screen lobby LCD display for under $1K

When you arrive at EchoDitto's international headquarters in Washington, DC, you'll immediately be struck by our wall-mounted LCD display, proudly beaming its dazzling multimedia content in all its 2400x600 @ 16-bit glory. A vast improvement from the inflatable carousel, you might say -- but it wasn't always that way.

Our first shot at the lobby LCD display was actually a series of 3 Metro Express newspapers designed as placeholders. This actually persisted for several weeks, but failed to stimulate us with its non-interactive nature. It also failed to display the latest news in reverse chronological order as desired. (Somehow, it seemed permanently stuck on January 9, 2007.)

Not long after (and $600 lighter), we found ourselves with three 19" flatscreens but no way to affix them to the wall. This wasn't much of an improvement.

Bolts had seemed like a good idea, but, as you might suspect, there was a setback. While stringing our XM Radio antennae in the kitchen, I got a peek inside the wall at the steel frame of the building. No studs meant no bolts, no bolts meant no LCDs, and no LCDs meant one unhappy CTO.

Research on the tensile strength of drywall ensued, followed by the aquisition of 6 butterfly anchors and a 2" boring bit. 60 dusty minutes later, the problem was solved. (In truth, it actually took several weeks of deliberation to to work up the courage to drill 2" diameter holes in the wall. You try it sometime.)

To secure the monitors to the wall, we used Omnimount QM100F wall mounts. Their slide-on action made it simple to slip the monitor on and off the wall once they've been mounted -- perfect for thieves!

There we had it -- three LCDs hanging on the wall. But what were we going to plug them into? And what were we going to display on them? Stay tuned for part two!